


"The good news is, you're not alone."

by Hagar



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Episode: s04e11 If-Then-Else, Gen, Meta, Morality, Narrative Analysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 00:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5519321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The looped structure of <i>If-Then-Else</i> is impossible to ignore. The simplified simulation lampoons the common elements but otherwise, it's the variable elements that stand out. Of these, Shaw's trials with the would-be suicide-bomber are some of the most dramatic. Her repeated attempts to defuse his rage and despair tie into the episode's titular theme of choices and consequences, as well as into the show's continued exploration of empathy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"The good news is, you're not alone."

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anadelic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anadelic/gifts).



> Adapted from [this](http://hagar-972.tumblr.com/post/107409580529/anaparamo-hagar-972-opinion-on-this-weeks) tumblr post.

The looped, repetitive structure of s04e11 _If-Then-Else_ is impossible to ignore. The final, simplified simulation lampoons these elements common to all scenarios - or plain constitutive of the characters and their relationships; otherwise, though, it's the variable elements that stand out. These elements are used for various narrative purposes. The evolving fate of the Degas, for example, is mostly a comic relief. In contrast, the bomb-wearing man on the subway is of the most dramatic.

In the first simulation, Shaw must deal with him without anyone else's advice. Working off her own judgment, Shaw verbally approaches him not the way one would a potential suicide but the way one does a hostage-taker. She doesn't coax him to open up so she can reflect back to him and use empathy to sooth the despair and sense of isolation that - typically - drive people to attempt suicide. What she does is get everyone else in the subway car to talk, thus humanizing them to him, and hopefully invoking him to empathize them. That was a wrong answer. This mistake on Shaw's part may or may not be a result of her unusual emotional landscape. I'm inclined to think it wasn't. The "Think of other people" mistake is incredibly common among people who weren't explicitly taught how to talk down potential suicides. ("Think of other people" is one of the least helpful attitudes one could take with a person in suicidal despair; oftentimes, they believe that permanently removing themselves _is_ the most helpful thing they could do.) Shaw is a soldier, not a police officer: there's no reason for her training to have included this chapter. It's entirely possible - likely, even - that she did a unit on hostage negotiations, but a suicide bomber is not an ordinary hostage-taker, and so the situation rather literally explodes.

In the second simulation, Shaw received advice from John. Though not a cop either, John is not a usual soldier, or only that: he's a Green Beret who became a spy. Both these training tracks include quite a lot about how to induce trust and openness in unlikely subjects. Even more important than that, John has been surviving major depression for years; he knows a lot about living with despair, and how to reach a person lost deep in it. (Notably, this is also the simulation in which John opts for suicide.) Indeed, what John suggests to Shaw is not police protocol for talking back a potential suicide, but something more similar to the attitude one attempts with a deeply depressed person, that is: to acknowledging that they feel what they feel, have a full right to it and no one else has power over it - but similarly, they cannot change what other people feel nor do they have any right or access to it. This approach puts the emphasis not on what the depressed person owes other but on what these others freely choose to give. It almost works, too, right up until the broker unleashes his verbal attack: then the motive that distinguishes the suicide- _bomber_ from the ordinary suicide flares up, and the subway car with it.

In the third simulation, Shaw received advice from Lionel. Fusco is a cop, and also no stranger to despair or what it goes to people. That's how Fusco responds to Shaw's question, too: he doesn't try to give her any formed solution or protocol but rather offers a personal anecdote, a narrative. And somehow, despite that the story ends with death, it directs Shaw to what she needs to do in order to inspire in her subject both ends of the empathy stick: to humanize his potential victims to him, and to have him humanized to them. In this simulation, just like in the second one, the broker attacks - but in this simulation, unlike the second one, the bystanders cease to be _bystanders_ , idle strangers, and instead they act as a community, to defend the one they perceive as the victim; and it's though this sense of community restored that healing occurs.

There's something else about the third simulation - two other things, in fact. It's the scenario on which the team has a chance of survival; and it's the scenario on which they don't split up. Remember the Degas: the bottom line of that relatively lighthearted affair is that life isn't much without these things worth living for. Put differently, it's a reminder that to truly save a life one needs to save what reasons make it worth living. Shaw's subway trials tell us that, too: to save the lives of these random strangers, she needed to redeem their value. The means to achieve that was the togetherness of community - and that togetherness was Team Machine's only chance of survival, too.

It matters, too, that it's Shaw through which this lesson is relayed - Shaw, and the Machine. Shaw is the antisocial personality who cares anyway, to the degree she chooses to dedicate her life to her community first as a doctor and then as a soldier (a commitment rooted in her mother's Persian identity at least as much as in her father's military one) - and the Machine is, well, a machine. The Degas is saved; the team is saved. Perhaps this episode tries to tell us something of how the show's world will be saved - or maybe, it tries to teach us something about ours.


End file.
